Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

In dense cities, when the building density keeps increasing while the coverage is almost sluggish, the composition and attributions of urban spaces are changing drastically. The transformation happens in both tangible and intangible aspects. The changes of urban open space (UOS) with high levels of publicness, have gained many researchers’ attention. The high levels of publicness means the the spaces service a relatively broad scope of people, such as the whole district. However, most discussions of publicness concentrate on one or two kinds of UOS, while the comprehensive analysis of all types of UOS is rare. This paper unfolds the evolution of these dynamic, high levels of publicness in urban open spaces (UOSs) by examining eight major types (including seventeen subtypes) of UOS with various attributions. Two districts of Hong Kong’s inner city are selected as study cases: Wan Chai and Mong Kok. This study uses the Level-Type framework to analyze the UOSs. The three steps are operated for the two cases. Furthermore, after case study, this study provides strategies for maintaining the high levels of publicness in UOS.